The appearance of your web site text can actually increase or decrease your sales. The size, font, style and colour of your text can easily affect your reader’s buying decision. Below are ten points to consider when typing text on your web site.

1. Easy To Read - You want to make it easy for your visitors to read your text. You shouldn’t use a light coloured text like yellow on a white background and you don’t want to use dark blue text on a black back-ground.

2. Create A Mood - You want to use the colour of your text to create a mood for the reader. If you want to create excitement, use red text. If you want to create greed, use green text. Use colours that would put you in the mood to buy your product.

3. Grab Their Attention - You can grab your readers attention by using headlines. Make the headline more noticeable by using a different coloured headline than your ad copy. This offsets the headline and pulls the reader into the rest of your ad copy.
4. Highlight Keywords - You can emphasize phrases and keywords that are important to your readers. For instance, use super, deluxe, fast, low price, free, new, etc. You could use bolding, underlining, italics, colourchanging, etc.

5. Sizing It Up - You don’t want to use text that is too small or too large. You want to use larger text for your headlines and subheadings. You want to use smaller text for your ad copy. If your grandparents can’t read it, it’s too small!

6. Don’t Use All CAPS! - You don’t want to use all capital letters in your ad copy. It looks unprofessional and is hard to read. You may want to use all CAPS in your headlines to offset it.

7. Choose your font with care - You want to use a text font that relates to the product or services your selling. You don’t want to use a comic type font when you are selling business books.

8. Spacing Out - Give your text “room to breathe“. You should indent and bullet key benefits your product or service gives to the reader. Your headlines, subheadings, sentences and paragraphs should be consistently spaced throughout your web site.

9. I Need Sunglasses - Don’t use all bright text colours and backgrounds on your web site. It will make your text hard to read and actually bother your readers’ eyes to the point they just decide to leave your site.

10. Check The Readability - It’s important to check your spelling and grammar before you upload your web page. When writing an ad copy you’re allowed to break some of those grammar rules to get your point across, but don’t overdo it.

George Cuthbert
http://www.onlinebusinessarticles.com
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In a previous article I shared a couple of tips that will reduce the feelings of discomfort that often come when a performance appraisal is discussed — gather your materials in advance, make a list of the key points you need to cover, and pick an appropriate place for the discussion. Here are four more suggestions that will make the performance appraisal discussion more relaxed.

Choose a Convenient Time

When is the best time to hold a performance appraisal discussion? There isn’t any one particular time that is ideal — mornings or afternoons, early or late in the week, it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is having enough time. Wise managers set a specific time for a performance review — perhaps 60 minutes — and announce at the beginning of the meeting just how long they have budgeted for the discussion. But they also make sure that the next activity scheduled for after the appraisal discussion is one that is either a low-priority (so that it can be re-scheduled) or highly flexible (like working on a long-range plan). It may turn out that more time is needed to discuss some sensitive items that arise during the discussion. It may also be that the performance appraisal discussion turns into a highly creative brain-storming session that needs to continue beyond the one-hour schedule. Make sure there’s enough time for unexpected events to play out.

Determine the Agenda

How are you going to kick off the performance appraisal discussion? What are the first words you plan to say? Will you review the performance appraisal sheet section by section, or do you want to start with the final rating and move backwards from there? When are you going to go over the employee’s self-appraisal?

Too often these questions are answered simply as “it just happened that way” — the manager gave no thought to the sequence of events that he wanted to follow.

A better approach is to have an agenda for the meeting. The agenda need not be written down (although that’s not a bad idea) but the manager needs to decide in advance how he wants to structure the discussion.

Arrange for Work Coverage

If you don’t have someone to answer your phone and you can’t switch the phone to send all calls directly into voicemail, then make a firm decision to simply ignore any phone calls that come in during the meeting. Steal a “Do Not Disturb” sign from the next hotel room you stay in and put it on the door handle of the room where you’re meeting. Tell your staff and colleagues to follow the “thousand-mile rule” — don’t disturb you with anything unless it’s of the same urgency that they would track you down and interrupt you if you were a thousand miles away.

Give the Individual a Copy of the Performance Appraisal to Read in Advance of the Meeting

Before I became a consultant, I spent fifteen years working for three large corporations: General Electric, United Airlines, and PepsiCo. Each one of those companies had a rigorous performance appraisal system; every one of my bosses took the process seriously.

But each one followed the same clumsy procedure when the day came for my performance appraisal discussion. At the time we had set for the meeting I would walk into his office and he would hand me the appraisal. I would try to read through the multi-page document just as fast as I could while my boss sat behind his desk trying to gauge from my reactions how I was taking it.

What a bumbling way to start the meeting! How can an employee take everything in from 2 minutes of speed reading?

Here’s a far better way to get the meeting off to an efficient, business-like start. An hour or two before the appraisal meeting is scheduled, give the employee the performance appraisal. Say, “Sam, at 3:00 this afternoon we’re going to get together for your performance review. I’d like you to read through the performance appraisal ahead of time so that you’re prepared for our meeting. Feel free to write any questions you have directly on the form, or highlight anything that you want to be sure we talk about. See you then.”

Sam now has some time to read carefully what you have written, at his own pace. He can reflect on the things you’ve said without having to immediately defend or explain himself. He can jot down notes and think of questions he’d like to ask.

If you ask people to complete a self-appraisal, ask for it at the same time that you give them a copy of their appraisal (if you haven’t asked them to send it to you earlier so you can use it as an information-source in completing the official performance appraisal.) You too will be more relaxed and better prepared by being able to read, in an unpressured way, what the individual has written about herself.

One caution, however. If the person you’re reviewing is a marginal performer with a bad rating, wait until the beginning of the meeting to hand over the performance appraisal. This increases your control of the situation.

Must performance appraisal discussions be uncomfortable exchanges? No. Following these small suggestions will help produce appraisal discussions that turn out to be productive learning events and true team-building experiences.

Dick Grote is one of America’s most well-known speakers, authors, and consultants on employee performance evaluations. His company, GroteApproach, offers a web-based performance evaluation system. On the web at: http://www.groteapproach.com

Source: High Quality Article Database - 365articles.com